Boat Bears Again!

We had very cold weather in Stoke-on-Trent at the beginning of this week, with snow and ice.  It was so cold that Polar and Grizzly were worried about Uplander II.  Boats don't just float in water; they have some water inside them as well, even if they are not sinking, which is supposed to be there.  They have hot and cold taps and water tanks, just like houses, and cooling water for the engine.  If the boat gets too cold during the winter, this can freeze, damaging the pipes and tanks and making a mess.

Polar and Grizzly decided we should all move back onto Uppie for the coldest nights of the week.  We were hoping that we could play in the snow while Grizzly and Polar were looking after the boat, but it was far too cold for games outdoors to be fun, and soon it got dark too.  Grizzly carried us onto Uppie and settled us onto my favourite old cushion on the settee to warm up

Inside the boat, it was very cosy, because Polar had lit the stove and got it glowing well - she says that making a good fire is a skill she learned from her dad, who used to work on steam engines.  We had a nice tea of stewed apple and custard, scones and biscuits, listened to some funny music on the radio called 'jazz' that Grizzly likes, then made ourselves a cosy bear bed out of all of the cushions and slept very soundly.

In the morning, when we woke up, a very big trading boat called Halsall was going by, heading towards the Harecastle Tunnel.  It was covered in snow and the crew were wrapped up in lots of warm and woolly clothes.  Trading boats are very important in winter, because they bring diesel fuel, gas, wood and coal to people who live on boats and in houses beside the canals.  Polar told us that, because they are so big and heavy, they are also good at breaking ice, although there was no ice on our part of the canal. 

Grizzly made us porridge before we went outdoors to play.  It was still very chilly.  We wanted to build a really, really big snow bear, as big as Grizzly or even Polar, but the snow was too powdery.  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't make it stick together into snowballs.  Our paws were getting very cold, so we came back inside Uppie and warmed up in front of the stove.

That night was even colder than the one before, but we stayed very snug in our bed of cushions.  In the morning, there was ice on the windows and we thought the canal must be frozen over now, but no - it was still runny!  Polar explained to us that, because the water around Uppie comes out of the very, very long Harecastle Tunnel, where it is the same temperature all year round, it almost never freezes during the winter.  We could see little wisps of mist rising from the water where it was warmer than the air above it.  I haven't told you what it is like to go through the tunnel on a boat, as that comes at the end of my voyage story and we are still only a little way into that, because I keep thinking of other interesting things to tell you.

Polar and Grizzly realised that the warm water would stop Uppie freezing unless it got very, very cold again.  So they brought us home, to help them get ready for Christmas, but we couldn't help wrap presents for Grizzly's grand-cubs, because the selotape stuck to the fur of our paws. 

Grizzly says we might go for a proper cruise on Uppie again very soon, maybe on Christmas Day, and Polar says she hopes to make us new Christmas sock jumpers, so we are going to be very good bears, at least until then.